For Sonny Gray, every tweak to his mechanics, every adjustment to his approach, is the same as a new branch growing from a tree. Make enough changes, he says, and things get too unwieldy. At some point, the time comes to trim the branches.

“That’s why I use the tree analogy,” Gray told The Athletic earlier this week, as he detailed some of the adjustments he plans to make before Friday’s start against the Blue Jays. “For me, it’s all about getting back to my base.”

That means turning back the clock to 2015, before an injury-plagued 2016 led Gray to a few alterations. Some were conscious. Some were not. Undoing those changes is no small task for a player who has long leaned on feel and instincts. But he said he’s been contemplating a return to his old mechanics for awhile.

“I remember vividly after an elbow injury in 2016 trying to change a couple of mechanical things where I thought I was protecting myself,” he said.

Gray declined...

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